Tall Tale Telling 吹牛

"What do you think the item in the above picture is?

A pipe! Yes, but it is no ordinary pipe. It's a Knowledge Instilling Pipe, KIP for short, a new product my team is working on. When it is released, none of us will need to work hard to learn anything any more. Learning will rather be something that we don't even feel. We will be able to enjoy life all our waking seconds long, and KIP will absorb the knowledge and skills that we want and fill them into our brain and body while we sleep."

This was the final speech I gave a couple of years ago in a communications class that I was taking from my local community college. Each student in the class was both the seller of their own product and a potential buyer of others'. The one who got the most buyers would be the winner, with the restriction that each person was allowed to buy at most three products, all from other students. In this class there were about twenty students from all walks of life and of all different age and ethnitics. Some of them made use of a simple item such as a backpack or an itch scratcher into up to ten uses; Some made tasty cocktail drinks out of simple ingredients; A flight attendant, who is also an opera singer, brought homemade lemon bars which were the most delicious I have ever tried so far. In the end, as you already guessed, I, the worst English public speaker, won.

The main idea? Language and speech skills are not the most decisive factors in real life. Creativity and uniqueness are.

我在這裏講過很多故事，以前有的老朋友說我吹牛，好聽點兒叫會編故事。其實，我以前講過的全都是真實事件，雖然沒有謙虛，但也沒有誇張或更改過。既然我講真事兒的時候有人聽著象假的，估計我吹起牛來，反而特有真實感。這個知識灌取器，是我十二歲時就有了的一個夢想，當然後來知道很多人都做過或還在做著同樣的夢。這可能也是我上麵這個約半分鍾的推銷（要不是被大家的笑聲多次打斷，還用不了這麽久）成功的原因。我在這個課上遇到了不少有趣的人，一個非常好的老師，最後還非常成功地吹了一次牛。更重要的是，它幫助我克服了完美主義和怯懦心，“包子有肉不在褶上”，英語也不例外。